http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com --
ISLAM may truly be a religion of peace and goodwill. I just would
really like to hear that from someone else besides Christians.

In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, President George W. Bush has
unfalteringly defended Muslims and the religion of Islam. Leading
church groups have spoken out on the need to sympathetically
understand Islam, and have called on their followers to more fully
embrace their Muslim neighbors and to work to advance
Christian-Muslim relations.

Oprah Winfrey, now apparently a Muslim scholar, has outdone
herself in presenting programs whose premise is that Islam is
misunderstood by the non-Muslim community. Our civil rights
establishment has trolled for every possible incident of
"discrimination" against Muslims or people of Arab descent in order
to file lawsuits. Books promoting an understanding of Islam are
flying off bookstore shelves, and even public schools are going to
great lengths to accommodate Muslim students and beliefs. So
what does the Muslim American community have to say?
Remarkably little.

I do not see leading Muslim Americans, rightly free to practice and
advance their religion in the United States, uniting to publicly
denounce by name Osama bin Laden, his atrocities, and his call for
Muslims to "kill Americans." I do not hear America's mullahs
consistently explaining how and why bin Laden's evil is a terrible
perversion of Islam. I do not observe Arab Americans organizing
marches in their communities to declare, "We are Americans first." I
do not notice American flags, which fly from every conceivable
building and vehicle in the United States, regularly and proudly
waving from America's mosques.

I do not find Arab Americans filling radio talk shows with their
outrage over the atrocities done in the name of their religion, or
declaring how they stand with their American brothers and sisters
against such treachery. I have looked, but I do not see Arab
Americans regularly expressing such sentiments in newspaper
advertisements, news stories or columns. Though there may be
hundreds of al Qaeda operatives in the United States, and
presumably they would attend Mosques, I do not hear, or hear of,
mullahs volunteering to glean any and all information about those
who may be practicing evil among them so that they can be turned
over to law enforcement.

Now, maybe all of that and more is there, it's just that somehow
I've missed it. Or maybe it's just that all but the remarkably few,
general, and often defensive statements I have seen are being
completely crowded out by a different kind of outrage pouring out
of the Muslim American community, particularly from groups like
CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations), which since Sept. 11
has focused its attention on vehemently complaining about an
"anti-Islamic smear campaign" afoot, even using the term
"Islamophobia."

Nowhere was this single-mindedness more evident than in the
issue of the Arab American Secret Service agent kept from a
American Airlines flight on his way to Crawford, Texas, and his
assignment to the president. The agent was armed and his
paperwork was not in order. Further, according to the pilot and
witnesses, the agent became hostile when confronted. The pilot,
with the lives of his passengers at stake and the American Airlines
"shoe-bomber" incident fresh in his mind, would not allow the man
to fly. (He was put on a later flight once his identity was confirmed.)

Well CAIR, along with the agent himself who has helped to publicize
the incident, was outraged. CAIR denounced the airline, and backs
the move by the agent to hire a lawyer and demand an apology
from American and a promise that the airline will never again
engage in "racial profiling."

Writer James Taranto said it best: "Apparently the agent was
willing to take a bullet for the president --- but not get on a later
flight for him."

If this was in fact a case of racial profiling, all Muslim and Arab
Americans should be outraged. But they should be outraged at
those young Muslim men, almost all of Middle Eastern descent, who
are trying to kill as many Americans as they can per Osama Bin
Laden's order. Instead, they wrongly vent their rage at decent
Americans (surely including Muslim Americans) who simply don't
want their planes blown up.

I want very much to believe that Islam is a religion of peace and
goodwill. I'm glad that the first, generous instinct of so many
Americans, including its Christian and other leaders, is to believe
and adamantly proclaim it so. I just would like to start seeing, in
word and action, the American Muslim community proclaim the same
every bit as
loudly.

JWR contributor Betsy Hart, a frequent commentator on CNN and the Fox News Channel, can be reached by clicking here.